Hey Washington Nationals fans, your team is in first place in the National League East with the best record in baseball…why the long faces?
Oh, that’s right, manager Davey Johnson and team brass aren’t budging and still plan to shut down your ace pitcher Stephen Strasburg once he hits 180 innings pitched.
Yeah. That’s a tough one.
For the uninformed, Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo said, before the season, that the 24-year-old phenom would be placed on an innings limit…playoffs or not.
Why? Because dude is still rehabbing from his 2010 Tommy John surgery.
And while there are plenty of skeptics out there, no one could be more puzzled that the 2012 Hall of Very Good inductee himself.
“They have a lot of money invested in him and are erring in the side of caution. Is it right? I personally don’t think so,” Tommy John told The Hall of Very Good exclusively. “After I had (Tommy John surgery), the only way we knew to get my arm stronger was to throw. So I threw every day. And the more I threw…the better my arm felt. I never missed a start in the thirteen years after arm surgery because of my arm being sore or stiff because I threw off a mound to a catcher every single day.”
The 23-year-old Strasburg is 12-5 with 160 strikeouts through 127 innings…but all that might be moot if he won’t be available for the postseason.
“It’ll be hard to tell the other 24 guys on the ballclub, ‘you busted your ass and we’re not going to pitch our best pitcher the last month of the season’,” John continued. “If I was Strasburg, I’d be lobbying to pitch. What you play for all season is to pitch in the postseason.”
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